


Team Koudelka

by Sheffield



Series: Dark!Gregor [11]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-25 00:29:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheffield/pseuds/Sheffield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We're Imperial Auditors, son, and we haven't had any dinner."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Team Koudelka

Lord Auditor Admiral Valentine was a hundred and two years old, which might be a respectable late middle age on Beta but was a good old age on good old Barrayar. The old man was a war hero - four times over - and a retired Admiral, but it was his status as a semi-retired Auditor that won him his security detail. He was, for life, one of Gregor’s seven auditors. (There were, strictly speaking, eight, but no-one expected Lord Auditor Vorparidjis actually to DO anything any more, and the ninth slot was traditionally held open for emergencies requiring special expertise.)

But at a hundred and two, with limited eyesight and attention span, and a comfortable habit of napping after breakfast, before lunch, after lunch and before dinner, Valentine had expected his “semi-retired” status to become as “emeritus” as poor old Vorparidjis’.

The girl was going to change all that.

He sighed.

Damn clever move, that; sending a little slip of a girl to talk to him. No-one - well, no Barrayaran male of his age and class - was going to turn away a polite girl in a well cut bolero visiting a sick old man. And if she had a parcel of Dendarii Maple Mead - Father Frost have mercy! - and a letter of introduction from her pa, who happened to have been the best damned secretary to the best damned officer Valentine had ever had the pleasure of serving... well. Olivia Koudelka was welcome anywhere.

If only he hadn’t opened the damned parcel.

Because now he knew.

And now he knew, well, he had to do something about it.

***

Delia Koudelka had no interest whatsoever in signing up for a course in Engineering Failure Analysis; that much became obvious in the first thirty seconds of their conversation. However her name had bought her entrance to the Vorthys household, and her grades had bought her a conversation about the possibility of an academic career, and if she had just left it there he would simply have had a pleasant interruption of his working day for another routine discussion with another potential student.

If only he hadn’t opened the box of little cakes before she’d left.

Because now he knew. And she knew that he knew.

And now, well, he had to do something about it. He closed the study door carefully and fired up the comconsole - the one that ImpSec assured him wasn’t monitored. And then closed it down again. Suddenly he wasn’t so sure he believed them.

***

Kareen Koudelka bumped into Lord Auditor Vorhovis at the Betan Embassy. She was waiting in line for her visa application to be processed when she spotted him on his way from the meeting about lignum quotas. Being waved and “cooeed” at by an attractive proper Barrayaran maiden was a welcome change from having to deal with the Betan second attache, an appalling harridan who seemed to welcome the opportunity to wrong-foot him by wearing a sarong or insisting on having a herm serve their tea. And if he had to smile diplomatically at one more gift of those revolting coded earrings...!

“What can I do for you, my dear?” he said genially, pacing her in the slow line snaking towards the desk.  
“Nothing, thanks. I’m just so excited - had you heard? No, what am I thinking, of course you wouldn’t have heard, it’s nothing to do with you; I mean, you have much more important things to be concerned with, it’s just....”  
His lip may have twitched. Had he EVER been that young? He had certainly never been that enthusiastic, about anything, not that he remembered.  
“Yes?”  
“I’m going to Beta! On one of the Countess’ scholarships! I’m so lucky I can’t tell you.”  
“Well congratulations Miss Koudelka,” he said genially. “I’m sure the Embassy staff will look after you,” he said. He may have raised his voice, just a little. Do the damned egalitarians no harm to realise there were some people they shouldn’t just process like cattle.  
“Thank you,” she said, a trifle breathlessly. He gave her a half-salute and turned to go.  
“Oh, Lord Auditor!” She had bumped into him, artlessly. What a pleasant... bounce, he thought, turning back.  
“You dropped your folio.”  
He have her another courteous half-salute, automatically, and accepted the pack of flimsies she was busy picking up from the floor.

Damn but she was good. There had been three packets of flimsies when he went into his meeting. 

And now there were four.

***

“Martya Koudelka, Sir,” she said smartly. Oh ho - one of Those Koudelkas, was she? Regent’s secretary marries Emperor’s bodyguard and produces four ornamental girls whose ebb and flow into and out of Imperial parties ensures the numbers are always even and the more egregious VorBores know that the risks of pawing at the wrong decolletage include broken limbs. Trouble with a capital T, so far as Lord Auditor Vogustafson was concerned. Damn but he’d just been looking for a quiet little hobby project, turning a few marks from exporting woodcarvings to Beta. The prices they’d pay for carved bits of leftover carpenter’s trash would make any backcountry lad with an adze a fortune - if he could but get his work from here to there. But Vorgustafson happened to know of a freighter travelling to Tau Verde via Beta that was scheduled to pick up a dozen uterine replicators at Beta leaving it with a nice hole in its cargo manifest on the Barrayar to Beta run that would do very nicely, thank you.

He sighed. No point trying to buy backcountry carvings at backcountry prices with her sharp eyes following him from stall to stall. What was the girl doing in the Dendarii hills to start with?

“I was just talking with Petya, over at the market office, sir,” she said brightly. “He didn’t know who you were, but when I told him he wondered if you’d be interested in these - just a few offcuts. He heard you were collecting for the Imperial Orphanage and wanted to make a contribution. Sir.”

Damned girl knew full well what he was doing. He leafed quickly through the box she’d handed him. Wafer thin decorative wall tiles, exquisitely made in marquetry work, with a dozen different wood grains. Extraordinary work, and the Betans would love them - and, more to the point, you could get a couple of dozen of them into a cubic foot of space.

Well, a hobby project was a hobby project - and the Imperial Orphanage could do with the funds, and after the first ten million it’s scarcely even fun any more, or why had he so gladly given it up when Gregor tapped him for auditor?

There was a flimsy caught between two of the tiles...

... damn. It’s never easy, he thought wearily. He nodded sharply to Miss Koudelka. Message received.

*** 

One of the most entertaining parts of being an Imperial Auditor, Lord Auditor Admiral Vorkalloner thought, amused, was the expressions on the faces of the unsuspecting when you turned up on their doorstep.

Cockroach Central, well now, that was another grade of entertainment altogether. He watched as the gate guards tried to process the disconnect between their instructions not to let any unauthorised persons enter ImpSec’s headquarters and the Barrayaran spinal reflex to bend over and grab your ankles when faced with an Imperial Auditor. 

“Do get out of the way,” Vorlaisner said irritably.  
“Now now, let the lads cover their asses,” Vorkalloner said cheerfully. “We’re Imperial Auditors, son, and we haven’t had any dinner. So open the doors, don’t even think about warning anyone we’re coming, and make sure nobody leaves till I tell you. Got it?”

Given clear orders, the men calmed down and saluted, which was lucky because that was the point at which the other cars pulled in and the poor gate guards’ crogglement turned to nuclear grade.

***

“We need a meeting room,” the old man said mildly.  
The analysts looked up, heads appearing over cubicle partitions like ancient dinosaurs rising from the swamps.

And then someone whispered “Admiral Valentine???” and things started to move very fast. Rumours spread round the building like wildfire as the Komarran guy drew the short straw and ushered the... procession... into the Board Room. 

Seven - ALL SEVEN - Imperial Auditors (no, Vorparadjis wasn’t there, it wasn’t the zombie apocalypse just yet) gathered in a single room, followed by a dozen proles they brought with them to carry the coffee machine, a cart of sandwiches and little pastries, and a case of brandy and cigars - well, are YOU going to tell them there’s no smoking? - and a dozen other unauthorised persons. Yes, someone said they recognised Gustafson, remember him, from archives? And they’re calling for people - they go in, but they don’t come out. Maintenance. Archives. Accounting. Records. All over! Call Haroche, yes. Allegre? Don’t know. Someone said he was already in there.

They didn’t actually form a huddle outside of the board room door - they didn’t actually dare. But the rumour that there had been nerve disruptor fire - multiple nerve disruptor fire... *simultaneous* multiple nerve disruptor fire ... in a room full of auditors spread around the building it was like wildfire. Firing squad? An actual, for real, firing squad...?

 

***

“And THEN what happened?”

Kou sat back in his chair and relaxed. It hadn’t been such a close-run thing, in the end, after all. A few bad apples. But Haroche - what a weasel!

Kou had “accidentally” run into his old sparring partner Lars Gustafson in a pastry shop in the Caravanserai a week ago and had quietly led the conversation around to Odd Things We Old Soldiers have Seen. And, yes, it was odd, wasn’t it, that General Haroche should be wandering through the ImpSec storage rooms not once but twice within a seven day period. 

And then he’d “accidentally” run into a lad he’d trained up in his days as the Regent’s Secretary, one of those hillmen who practically had to be taught to read and write before he could be taught how to file. Lad had done well for himself, though - now something Big in Records at ImpSec. And, yes, still had that eidetic memory that you often find in people whose reading skills aren’t up to much; a useful skill he hadn’t lost as he acquired others. So, yes, he remembered exactly what kind of weapon would cause the symptoms Simon Illyan had reportedly suffered from, and he remembered exactly where it was stored in exactly what part of the store room.

Finally Drou had gone for tea and cakes with her old friend Misha from the residence and learned about the odd goings on at the ImpSec tea parties, and the brown capsule that had gone out in the waste, left behind in one of the saucers the last time Haroche and Illyan took tea with the Emperor.

“Then Allegre stood up and said he was placing Haroche under arrest.” Kou said.  
“Right there? In the middle of Cockroa- In the middle of Imp Sec itself?” Delia asked.  
“In the middle of seven auditors? I’m surprised he didn’t shrivel up and die spontaneously!” Olivia said.  
“Thank you, girls, that’s quite enough,” Drou said gently. “You did a good thing, and we got the information to the right people, and I’m sure Allegre will do a good job now he’s cleaned house.”

The Koudelka girls were thrilled with their part in the regime change at Cockroach Central. Kou was pretty pleased with himself, for that matter - putting it together like that, laying it out for the auditors, and then seeing them in action; it had been quite like old times. Haroche hadn’t gone easy in the end; there had been a few seconds after Lord Auditor Admiral Valentine had given the order when it could have gone the other way. The girls didn’t need to know about that part, he’d judged, but goodness, he’d forgotten how facing down big men with guns did one’s bowels good!

But later, after Drou had done her exercises and come to bed, he said cautiously “you’re quiet, lovvie? Everything all right?”  
“I was just remembering what Misha said, that’s all.”

The strange goings on at the residence. The boy emperor, no longer a boy, no longer turning to his bodyguards for wisdom. The awful tales of the Little Room that no-one was to speak of, but everyone knew was there.

And, gently, quietly, in their little haven away from the eyes of their girls, Kou and Drou rested their heads on each others shoulders and wept.


End file.
